The Society of Friends is not a yearly meeting, not a Five Years Meeting, not an occasional conference, not a central office somewhere, not a series … - Rufus Jones
" "The Society of Friends is not a yearly meeting, not a Five Years Meeting, not an occasional conference, not a central office somewhere, not a series of committee meetings; it is primarily and essentially a widely scattered number of local meetings, little cells, where the actual vitality and power and future potency of Quakerism is being settled and determined. We work in vain unless we keep our minds focused on these local units.
English
Collect this quote
About Rufus Jones
Rufus Matthew Jones (25 January 1863 – 16 June 1948) was an American writer, magazine editor, philosopher, historian and theologian who was one of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Haverford Emergency Unit (a precursor to the American Friends Service Committee), and the only person to give two Swarthmore Lectures, the first of them all, in 1908, and his second in 1920.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Rufus Matthew Jones
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Rufus Jones
Most persons are awakened and set on their new track of life through the quickening and kindling power of some person who becomes for them the instrument of inspiration and of the creation of faith and the vision of a nobler way of life. Persons are set on fire by someone who is already aflame. It is a trumpet call to high adventure that starts the forward movements away from old forms. That is one of the greatest stories in the long history of religion. It was through a long and wonderful circuit of souls, in a succession of forerunners, that the kindling idea of “Something of God in the soul of man” came to George Fox.
There has always been in the Society of Friends a group of persons pledged unswervingly to the ideal. To those who form this inner group compromise is under no circumstance allowable. If there comes a collision between allegiance to the ideal and the holding of public office, then the office must be deserted. If obedience to the soul's vision involves eye or hand, houses or lands or life, they must be immediately surrendered. But there has always been as well another group who have held it to be equally imperative to work out their principles of life in the complex affairs of the community and the state, where to gain an end one must yield something; where to get on one must submit to existing conditions; and where to achieve ultimate triumph one must risk his ideals to the tender mercies of a world not yet ripe for them.
Loading...